Snitch

"Snitch" is not the usual action movie. It's too odd for that. Based on a true story, it has the weirdness of real life, which is good. But also like real life, it has that funny way of not making much sense or being all that enjoyable.

Dwayne Johnson stars in a role in which he does not take off his shirt, so this has to be considered a step forward for the big guy. Johnson has always had more than action-hero promise - he's personable, reasonable and seems intelligent. He's still not 100 percent there as an actor. Whenever he talks on the phone, you just know there's nobody on the line. And his tendency to smile out of context can be disconcerting, as though he knows it's a good smile and just wants to cart it out. Still, when the day comes that Johnson gets a real chance to prove himself, "Snitch" will be counted as a step in that direction.

In "Snitch," he's a divorced father with a successful trucking business, whose son is arrested for drug dealing. The son isn't a drug dealer, but a friend framed him, and consequently the boy faces 10 years in prison, if he's lucky, and 30 years if his run of horrible luck continues. So much for mandatory sentencing laws.

Here's where things get weird. John (Johnson) goes to the federal prosecutor - Susan Sarandon, just perfect as an icy careerist - and the two hatch a demented scheme: She will drastically reduce the boy's sentence if John will pose as a wannabe drug courier and set up some major drug dealer for arrest. Any major drug dealer will do.

This means, first of all, finding someone who might know a big-time drug dealer, and then persuading the drug dealer to take a meeting with him. Then in the meeting, he has to convince the dealer of his sincerity. He has to say that even though he has made himself rich by transporting legitimate goods, he has now gotten so greedy that he wants to start hauling heroin and cocaine.

Throughout "Snitch," one question keeps entering the mind: Really? This is a true story? Is there really somebody this stupid? Here is this man trying to save his son, but in a way that seems guaranteed to get himself and his whole family killed. Even if he succeeds, the best he can hope for is a lifestyle about as social and carefree as bin Laden's post-9/11.

His idea, nutty in conception, becomes nuttier in execution. Even after the idea is formed and in place, John keeps showing up at the prison to visit his son, heedless of the possibility that someone might make the connection, and he keeps showing up at the prosecutor's office for strategy discussions, not considering the likelihood that the drug dealers will be following him. And Dwayne Johnson - he's not exactly inconspicuous. He'd be easy to follow.

In the end, "Snitch" becomes a game of Idiot, Idiot, Just Who's the Idiot. Was the man on whom the story was based an idiot, or did the screenwriters turn him into one? No one in the movie says, "Hey, John, you're such an idiot," so maybe the assumption is that we're the idiots and won't notice anything odd. Finally, there's the outside chance that everyone connected with this movie is an idiot and considers the actions of the protagonist perfectly sensible.

It's hard to say which option is true, and in the end, this uncertainty kills most of the fun.